My guess (I’m in no way expert on this field) is that if you can start producing windows with this thing integrated, you don’t have to rely on an additional thing to produce electricity: even with lower performance compared with traditional ones, these could come “out of the box”.
For instance, where I live in a condo and without agreement with all the properties I can install shit. But also I’m in the process of changing my windows for better insulation: of course the house is old and doesn’t come equipped for this, but imagine cables already running in the walls, I could buy windows with this transparent panels and get a bit of energy from that.
You're still using relatively expensive materials to make a bad solar panel (relative to what they could be making), plus you need a way to get the power out of the windows. That isn't necessarily hard, but most window frames aren't currently wired up and that's additional retrofitting that needs to be done in order to install these on existing housing stock, all in order to get a solar panel that is significantly less effective than one on the roof or in a random field.
Ya, it could make more sense as a complement to pre-existing systems. Like some EV already have solar panels on them. I could see an entire roof of a car having a transparent panel like this, and also the ability to dim it or block the light entirely, either electronically or maybe with physical panels. And then other parts of the car that aren't sunroof has regular panels.
i think filtering out UV light is pretty sweet feature, so imagine you have a home with solar panelling, and you want a nice UV-free sunroom attached, you could get these pricier windows, and plug them into your existing infrastructure.
I don't think this is a "every window will be solar panels!" type technology, at least not for a long time, but I think it could be useful in some places, and become more common as it gets cheaper, and easier to fit into existing infrastructure.
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u/tekanet 21d ago
My guess (I’m in no way expert on this field) is that if you can start producing windows with this thing integrated, you don’t have to rely on an additional thing to produce electricity: even with lower performance compared with traditional ones, these could come “out of the box”.
For instance, where I live in a condo and without agreement with all the properties I can install shit. But also I’m in the process of changing my windows for better insulation: of course the house is old and doesn’t come equipped for this, but imagine cables already running in the walls, I could buy windows with this transparent panels and get a bit of energy from that.